Opinion Piece by Caleb Minson, co-host of the “Cumberland Unfiltered” podcast. In the aftermath of yesterday’s political assassination in Utah, many on the Left automatically trotted out their hackneyed “gun control” rants. 

Today is a sad day. Yesterday, a 31-year-old father of two little kids, a husband, a son, an uncle, and a friend to many, was gunned down in front of thousands live and millions more virtually. His name was Charlie Kirk.

Charlie wasn’t perfect. None of us are. He also wasn’t silent about the Second Amendment. He believed what the Founders believed: that freedom comes with risk, and that the right to bear arms is not about hunting, it’s about survival, liberty, and responsibility.

At America’s founding, private citizens owned muskets, cannons, and even private warships armed with heavy guns. The point was simple: a free people should never be outgunned by the state. The Bill of Rights wasn’t written to protect us, it was written to protect our rights so we could protect ourselves.

History proves why this matters. In the last century alone, rulers who stripped their people of arms left mountains of bodies in their wake:

• Lenin & Stalin — ~25 million dead
• Hitler — ~17 million dead
• Mao — 40–60 million dead
• Pol Pot — ~2 million dead

Combined, over 100 million civilians slaughtered, not because they had guns, but because they didn’t. Disarmament wasn’t safety. It was domination.

Now look at America: ~

• 400 million firearms ~
• 333 million people ~
• 18,000 gun homicides in 2023

That’s 0.005% of the population, one in 17,000 Americans. One homicide for every 22,000 guns in circulation. Tragic, yes. But nowhere near the “epidemic” used to justify gutting the Second Amendment.

Some are saying the right only cares about Charlie because he was “one of us.” That we didn’t cry out for the Democrat who was murdered, or the children gunned down in schools, or the countless other names lost to senseless violence.

But that’s projection. I’m not claiming the right is always pure. It isn’t. Just like the left, the right has its grifters, its hypocrites, its bad people. That’s not a partisan flaw, that’s the nature of mankind. The truth is, every innocent life taken by violence is a tragedy. It doesn’t matter if the victim wore red, blue, or no colors at all. The principle remains the same: political violence and lawless murder cannot be excused, not for anyone, ever.

Charlie Kirk understood this. He knew mankind will never be rid of its human problem. Evil exists. Violence exists. Always has, always will. Stripping guns from the innocent doesn’t cure the sickness, it only guarantees the innocent stand defenseless when evil arrives.

And yes, there are irresponsible people out there. But what gives one human being the right to assume authority over another? That isn’t stewardship, that’s domination. And domination, dressed up as “safety” or “progress,” is just another face of evil. This is the nature of mankind, the beast. It cannot be legislated away.

The world is a dangerous place. We aren’t guaranteed the next damn minute. But we should all be allowed, no, entrusted, to fight that cruel, dangerous world in the way we see fit. To protect our families. To defend our homes. To claw and bleed for that next minute of life.

That isn’t just a constitutional right. That’s the dignity of being human. And it’s a dignity no government, no tyrant, and no self-appointed ruler has the authority to strip away.

Don’t take my word for it, look up the numbers yourself. Check the CDC mortality stats. Check the population. Check the number of guns in circulation. See the reality for yourself. Truth doesn’t fear scrutiny.